


Slowing Down

by aactionjohnny



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 1960s, First Kiss, M/M, Music, One-Shot, canon-divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 09:44:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20338093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aactionjohnny/pseuds/aactionjohnny
Summary: Instead of letting him leave the Bentley that night, Crowley begs him to stay.





	Slowing Down

**Author's Note:**

> I believe that we as a society are not over “u go too fast for me” and I have emotional needs, one of them is to imagine what might have happened if Crowley would have been like “Well now hang on a minute—“
> 
> I have a few multi chapter wips that I just....can’t....so I’ve been enjoying some one shots and I hope u like it!

He awaits an answer and it feels like a century of anxious sleep. Now, after all that heartbreak disguised as bitterness, he finally has him within reach, nothing but the center console of a car keeping them apart, and still it’s as if he will get ripped away all over again.

But, really, it was  _ him _ that caused the rift with his stubbornness. He watches with an unsteady heart as Aziraphale opens his mouth to speak, and he longs to hear some faraway place. The other end of the continent. Into the ocean. Onto the moon above, so barely visible through the bright lights of London that surround them.

“You go too fast for me, Crowley,” he says finally, and it cuts like a knife. Right through his skinny chest, it splits him in two. For a moment he can’t think of anything to say. His instinct, ever-demonic, is to hiss and scorn him and tell him to get lost, but the pain is far too heavy for him to pretend to feel anything but sorrow. He sits in stunned silence as Aziraphale places a hand on the door, gets ready to leave. The door swings open and he places his feet on the ground outside.

“Wait—“ Crowley insists, weak and quiet, grabbing the sleeve of Aziraphale’s jacket like a child lost in a crowd, desperate for safety. “Don’t go, Angel,” he says, his features drooping, his grip on the fabric softening. He’s too rough, too fast. It is so unbefitting a demon to beg like this, he knows. But he’s never been very good at being a demon, has he? Aziraphale is proof of that. He oughtn't long for him. But he’s tired of denying it. He’s tired of letting him leave, letting him get away. Suddenly it feels so urgent, so dire, that he should tell him, however clumsily, that he is irrevocably in love. That he doesn’t have to feel the same, but  _ please _ , just stay. “Please, just…” He sighs, let’s go of Aziraphale’s jacket, and settles back into his seat. He’s a coward. He’s sure Aziraphale will go on, slam the door, disappear again for years until fate brings them back together again.

The door does close, but it is soft and careful, and Aziraphale stays in the passenger’s seat, looking nervous but resigned.

“There’s nowhere I want to go, Crowley. Nowhere for you to drive me.” He stares straight ahead out the windshield, his lips pursed tightly and his hands clasped politely in his lap. 

“Have a drink with me,” he says, unable to keep himself from pleading. “Just one. Then I’ll take you home. I’ll even drive slow.”  _ For you,  _ he almost says, but he manages to bite his tongue. He hears the absolving sound of Aziraphale’s breathing.

“Very well. A drink.” He buckles his seatbelt, wiggling a little to adjust his position.

They go silently. Not even the radio could cut the tension, the thick fog of uncertainty. He shifts no higher than third gear, nearly even obeying the speed limit, until they arrive outside of an old pub. They’ve been here before. They’ve shared drinks and stories and long, ambiguous gazes and each time Crowley missed his chance.

Not tonight, he decides. He can’t hold it off any longer, he knows, dooming himself as he holds open the door of the pub for his Angel. To look upon him is simply too devastating. He’ll spill it all, tonight. Maybe after a drink. Or three, if he can convince him to stay.

They order two glasses of house red, and the throaty voice of Dusty Springfield plays divinely through the jukebox.  _ You don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand. _ Crowley sighs, wondering if the ache in his heart has possessed the music, or if the bartender is simply tired of the two of them dancing around one another. Trying to urge them closer, trying to get them drunk and into bed. Crowley would be lying if he said he didn’t appreciate the help. 

“You...will only use it if you absolutely must, right?” Aziraphale asks, timid and sad.

“Begpardon?”

“The...the water, Crowley.”

“I’m not  _ that  _ stupid, Angel.” A lie, maybe. He feels very foolish indeed. “I won’t just go off half-cocked n’ murder a colleague on a _ whim. _ ”

Aziraphale nods, and he wonders if he even believes him.

“Just...don’t get hurt, alright? Even the slightest drop could—“

“I know the risks.”

“And yet you—“ 

Aziraphale stifles, smiling at the waitress as she sets their drinks down before them. The wine looks black in the dim light of the bar, a void in the wide bowl of the glass, balancing impossibly on the thin crystal stems and delicate bases. Crowley feels suspended in the liquid, struggling against the thin glass. Once she’s gone, Aziraphale goes on in a furtive tone.

“...and yet you insist on having it.”

“What, do you think I’m going to  _ drink _ it or something? Boil It and make a stew?”

“I know how you...get.”

“How I  _ get?” _ he challenges, taking hold of his glass and taking a thick sip, not bothering to enjoy the nuance of the flavors like he usually does.

“Exactly what I said before. You...you go so  _ fast _ and you make such rash decisions…”

“Rash decisions? Are you serious, Angel?” he asks, his voice hoarse. “Do you have any idea how long I—“ He huffs, taking another long sip. Aziraphale does the same, though his composure is impeccable as ever.

“How long you’ve what?” Aziraphale asks, holding his glass lightly in both hands.

“You’ve no right to say I’m rash, Angel. I’ve waited thousands of years, not saying a god damn thing about it, and you say I go too fast…” He is mumbling, practically talking to himself, leaning back in his chair with a hand to his chin, staring at the sticky floor. He lets out one long, shaky breath, and he gives up. He said it would be tonight, and tonight it will be. Just then, as he leans forward, his elbows on the little table, the song changes, the meandering and soft sadness of Paul Simon’s poetic voice trickling into the room.  _ Time hurries on _ … He gathers his courage. “...I’ve loved you for a long time, Angel.”

They trade places then, and this time it is Aziraphale sitting stunned and silent, seeming unable to respond.  _ I held her close but she faded in the night… _

“So,” Crowley goes on, feigning nonchalance, leaning back in his chair again. “Do with that what you will.”

He does nothing with it, at first. His face grows soft and almost tearful, and he sips his wine with nervous lips. He keeps inhaling sharply, trying to respond, but he comes up short. Crowley gulps down the rest of his drink, and snaps to the bartender to pour him another.

“Here I thought I...was the only one,” Aziraphale says, staring holes through the table, no longer haughty and with good posture. “What...what are we to do about it?”

“How can you be so calm?” Crowley asks, exasperated, his round, dark glasses falling down his nose a little. “I’ve just— I’ve just told you I’m in love with you! Six-thousand years!”

“I am trying not to cause a  _ scene,  _ Crowley.” He bites his lip, looking left to right. “Of course I wish I could...I don’t know, kiss you. Embrace you. But there are so many people.”

“None of them are from heaven or hell, Angel. We can do whatever we want.”

They can do whatever they want. In this dark pub, everyone drunk and saturated in the new freedom, the openness of the culture, no one will pay them any mind. He stands, his chair making that awful scraping noise as he pushes it back, and he rounds the table, then holds out a hand to Aziraphale. Timidly, he takes it, and then he’s swiftly pulled to his feet, and close to Crowley, their hands clasped like dancing.

“Oh—“ he stammers, his face clearly flushed even in the dark, and certainly not just from the wine. They are pressed together at the toes, the hips, the chest, one of Crowley’s arms around Aziraphale’s back as if he’ll dip him in a ballroom, but they stay upright. The jukebox takes a trip in time, a decade back, and the velvet sound of Sam Cooke warms his cheeks.  _ You send me… _ He sways some, curling his fingers through Aziraphale’s, bending his neck forward, his lips ghosting softly across his cheek.  _ You thrill me _ … 

“Kiss me,” he says, so gentle a command. Finally does he feel like a proper demon, tempting a sweet man to sin. There comes a pleasant, stormy rumbling in his chest. Desire. The very thing he wants all wrapped up in his arms after all this time.

And Aziraphale is weak to his wanting. He tilts his head, eyes fluttering closed, and finally, divinely, masterfully, he kisses him. Crowley feels his knees weaken and threaten to buckle, feels his toes go numb and his ears turn hot, and he cannot stop himself from snaking his arms around him tighter, more desperate, pulling him by the waist, so close he can feel his heart. Beating fast and hard. Aziraphale slides his own arms over Crowley’s shoulders, hands sliding into the soft, red mop of his hair. He swears he hears some quiet clapping from behind the bar, but he hasn’t the will nor the time in his heart to chide any onlookers.

When they come up for air, the room seems to spin. And behold, how they’ve not burst into flames. Though indeed he feels a burning in his chest, in his belly, between his thighs and in his very soul. He slides his palms up Aziraphale’s back.

“Let’s get out of here, Angel,” he says, so soft, and he relents in his caressing, instead taking Aziraphale’s hands, sparing some demonic magic to manifest some money on their table. He’s feeling awfully generous. “Come back to mine.”

“ _ Please,” _ Aziraphale begs, allowing himself to be spirited out the door. The eagerness in his voice is titlating, but despite how badly he yearns, he wonders if they ought to take that next step. Too fast, too fast.

They hold hands across the center console on the way to Crowley’s flat, enjoying the quiet and the pattering of the rain against the hood of the Bentley. They climb the stairs in the same silence, peppered with feverish kisses against the dark walls, until finally they reach the flat. Tired, tipsy, high on affection, they tumble into bed. He could do it, he knows. He could slither on top of him and kiss his neck and make him beg. But now that he’s told him, now that he’s shown him his heart, he feels as though they have all the time in the world. There will be many nights for making love. He instead shimmies close, resting his head on Aziraphale’s chest, curling himself into the warm, safe cocoon of his arms. He feels very small, coiled up, beloved as he feels those lips upon his hair.

“Tell me you love me, Angel,” he says. He is so weak now, so desperate. But, alone with him, he allows himself to be vulnerable and needy. He allows himself to say all the things he hasn’t said.

“I love you dearly, Crowley,” he says. He strokes his hair as a comfort, an assurance. “Never doubt it.”

Eventually he falls into a happy slumber, a calm smile on his face. Though he’s tired, for the first time in a century, he cannot wait for morning to come.

**Author's Note:**

> I love crying
> 
> The songs featured are “you don’t have to say you love me” by Dusty Springfield, “the leaves that are green” by Simon and Garfunkel, and “you send me” by Sam Cooke
> 
> Let me know what you think! 
> 
> Find me on twit @ peebnutbutter


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